test/README.external

Running external test suites with OpenSSL
=========================================

It is possible to integrate external test suites into OpenSSL's "make test".
This capability is considered a developer option and may not work on all
platforms.

At the current time the only supported external suite is the one used by
BoringSSL.


The BoringSSL test suite
========================

In order to run the BoringSSL tests with OpenSSL, first checkout the BoringSSL
source code into an appropriate directory:

$ git clone https://boringssl.googlesource.com/boringssl boringssl

The BoringSSL tests are only confirmed to work at a specific commit in the
BoringSSL repository. Later commits may or may not pass the test suite:

$ cd boringssl
$ git checkout 490469f850e

From the OpenSSL source code configure to use the external tests:

$ cd ../openssl
$ ./config enable-ssl3 enable-ssl3-method enable-weak-ssl-ciphers \
  enable-external-tests

Note that using other config option than those given above may cause the tests
to fail.

Run the OpenSSL tests by providing the path to the BoringSSL test runner in the
BORING_RUNNER_DIR environment variable:

$ BORING_RUNNER_DIR=/path/to/boringssl/ssl/test/runner make test

Note that the test suite may change directory while running so the path provided
should be absolute and not relative to the current working directory.

To see more detailed output you can run just the BoringSSL tests with the
verbose option:

$ VERBOSE=1 BORING_RUNNER_DIR=/path/to/boringssl/ssl/test/runner make \
  TESTS="test_external_boringssl" test


Test failures and suppressions
------------------------------

A large number of the BoringSSL tests are known to fail. A test could fail
because of many possible reasons. For example:

- A bug in OpenSSL
- Different interpretations of standards
- Assumptions about the way BoringSSL works that do not apply to OpenSSL
- The test uses APIs added to BoringSSL that are not present in OpenSSL
- etc

In order to provide a "clean" baseline run with all the tests passing a config
file has been provided that suppresses the running of tests that are known to
fail. These suppressions are held in the file "test/ossl_shim/ossl_config.json"
within the OpenSSL source code.

The community is encouraged to contribute patches which reduce the number of
suppressions that are currently present.